The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Right now, I'd prefer to be working on a reputation as a decent games reviewer by finishing Condemned 2 and bringing you lovely people my findings. There are however two small problems with that. One, not that many people are reading this, and two, it's too bright right now - and I'll explain more in my Condemned 2 review.

Onto Phantom Hourglass then! I should say first of all that I'm a pretty big fan of the Zelda... well I'd like to say Zelda series, but as anyone who's ever played more than one Zelda game can tell you, they're all the same game with minor tweaks for whatever console they're on this year. So, I'm a fan of the Zelda game, and as I seem to have just mentioned, I have no bones whatsoever in agreeing that the story has slipped out of the realm of "tried and tested" to "tired, bored, demented and ready to be hunted down and shot". If the Halo universe is anything to go by, then Nintendo will be able to flog the same bastard story for another 800 years or so, because apparently, "tried and tested" diesel engines will still be around in another 800 years. Screw that, this is a Phantom Hourglass review, so I'll get back on track.

Phantom Hourglass, I'll admit, was my initial reason for buying a DS when it first came out, and it was scheduled for release that Christmas. Sod all happened that Christmas and I realised I'd spent £120 just to play Mario Kart with some mates. Remembering that I also had an Xbox, several controls, a couch and some real racing games, I decided I had no reason to keep my little blue DS, and swapped it for a 360. Then those cunning bastards at Nintendo announced that Phantom Hourglass would be out before Christmas that year.

This resulted in me getting a harsh word from my manager, having sworn profusely when the deliver of Phantom Hourglass arrived at work. I took this opportunity to pester everyone in my family to come together and buy me a new DS for Christmas, so I could finally play Phantom Hourglass. Again, sod all happened, but I did spend my Christmas break selling copies of a game I'd been waiting for for 2 years to the majority of my home town. Now it's April, and the foolish Government has paid me my student loan, so I gleefully went out and bought myself a DS with Phantom Hourglass, so here I am.

Should the case be that you've never heard of Phantom Hourglass, I'll take this opportunity to explain the story. Once upon a time, when Nintendo were still relatively sane, there was a little console called the Gamecube. On the Gamecube, Nintendo released a game called "The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker", along with every other Zelda game they'd ever made on a special disc, but that's not the point. The point is, they made a cell-shaded Zelda game with a hell of a lot of cell-shaded water for the now retarded looking Link to sail through, with a smartarse talking boat that could tell you not to go to certain places and turn around when you tried. It's the present day... or rather, November of last year, and Nintendo released Phantom Hourglass, a direct sequel from Windwaker, without the balls to outright admit to it, unlike the only ever true, big bollocked Zelda sequel, Majora's Mask (a game I respect for finally changing the Zelda story formula).

Now I've wasted a lot of time saying that Phantom Hourglass is a Sequel of Windwaker, I believe it's about time I got on with my actual review. Probably sick of every developer in the land using the DS' touch screen as nothing more than a decent menu screen, Nintendo have decided to fully utilise the only selling point of the DS (let's be honest here), by forcing the player to do everything with the touch screen. Actually, I'm lying... a bit. The map is the B button. And that's about it. You do everything with the touch screen, unless the game decides it'd rather humiliate you in public by making you yell at the top of your voice into the little fold away package I hope you play holding with your hands. Just imagine what would happen if you were sat on a bus and someone behind you randomly shouted "I REALLY FUCKING WANT IT! GIVE IT TO ME, YOU FUCKER!!" at his crotch.

I'm taking the piss a bit, using the touch screen for everything is better than using it for some things, as anyone who played Metroid Prime Hunters will know, because it gives you one nice, easy way to hold the console, rather than being admitted to the hospital, suffering from Scolex Syndrome. Not only does this not cripple you, it works quite well for the most part, allowing you to walk slowly or charge blindly off a cliff, even without the benefit of a joystick. And I respect that. What I don't respect is the times when it fucks up and leaves you shaking like a shitting dog when you try killing an enemy by tapping it. Or times when I want to do a roll and it decides it'd rather send me careening off a cliff atop some pointy boulders.

You could also criticise Phantom Hourglass for copying items from all the other Zelda games, only you'd look like an uninformed berk who doesn't know that the items have been pretty much the same for the last 20 or so years anyway. To avoid looking like a berk, you could rather notice the really quite limited number of items in Phantom Hourglass. I'll put this straight, should any Nintendoites be reading this. Ten years ago, you brought us Ocarina of Time, and a few years later, Majora's Mask, on the N64. Seeing as you've brought out games like Mario 64 for the DS, it's pretty evident that the DS is a more powerful little gadget than the N64. I know it's a handheld, but by the arse of J-Lo, why are you condensing the classic franchises? Metroid Prime basically let you shoot, or shoot another colour; while even Super Metroid was packed with random gadgets and crap like that. It's the same story with Phantom Hourglass. Off the top of my head, I count 8 items for link to use. Ocarina of Time had half as many items... for the bow.

I can safely say that on behalf of the entire Zelda-playing community, we'd rather have lots of items and puzzles for them, than a big, expansive and mostly empty ocean. Please remember that in future. After you've rubbed and shouted your way through the 8 temples, and returned to the starting temple each fucking time, you get a pretty decent final boss battle. At least it would be if it was a bit more challenging. I've suffered worse injuries picking my nose than Link did while fighting the final boss. I know Zelda games are capable of good boss battles, because I played Twilight Princess and remember psyching the rest of the world out while I duelled with Ganon at the end. Yeah, the last boss in Twilight Princess is Ganon, if you didn't see it coming you deserve a firm kick in the teeth.

Nintendo seem to be very proud of that battle, and rightly so, but they also seemed to really like the semi-final boss in Windwaker, again, quite rightly so, they both cracked the right balance of difficulty that made you sweat while fighting them, and cheer when you pulled it off without suffering the embarrassment of a Game Over screen. In Phantom Hourglass, they've tried mashing these two together, and also glueing on more touch screen compatibility. What you end up with is a pleasant collage, with a striking resemblance to that of a collage put together by a child at nursery. The art critic inside you knows it's shit, but the human side of you thinks it's pleasant. And that's the kind of "decent" I spoke of before. It doesn't quite work and it's not actually challenging. But compared to the more hectic battles you've had up to that point, it's nice.

And oh yeah, the ending's a ball-ache. After all that work, Nintendo pulls the oldest and most hated story telling technique in the book. Yeah, it was all a dream, apparently. Only you still have the Phantom Hourglass. That's it. Link and Tetra wake up, despite not being asleep, and they're right at the start of the game with some pirates asking what the screaming was about. Luckily my DS is insured against accidental damage, which should pay to have the stylus removed.